Alwaght- Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, says that Moscow has the sovereign right to respond to US-led NATO military expansion.
“We do not hide the fact that we feel negatively about NATO’s trend to move its military infrastructure toward our borders, to involve other countries in the bloc’s military activities. The Russian sovereign right to ensure its security in the way which corresponds to today’s risks will enter into force,” Lavrov said after talks with his Finnish counterpart Timo Soini on Monday.
Lavrov pointed out that there are no threats that would justify the militarization of the Baltic Sea region adding that, “We are convinced that there are no threats in this region that would justify its militarization."
Over the past two years, NATO has carried out a number of large-scale military exercises along the Alliance's eastern flank, bordering Russia.
Russia has warned against NATO’s increased military buildup along its border, stating that it is provocative and threatens regional and global stability.
He also noted that the Russian side had shared its concerns over increased NATO activity in the region and the movement of the alliance’s infrastructure towards Russia’s borders. "We are convinced that all issues of cooperation in the Baltic Sea area and in the north in general should be solved within the framework of the multilateral formats that have already been created," Lavrov added.
He stressed that Russia has never planned and does not plan to attack any NATO member country. "I am confident that serious and honest politicians know that Russia will never attack any member country of the North Atlantic Alliance," Lavrov said. "We do not have any plans like this. I think NATO knows it very well but just uses the pretext to deploy more equipment and battalions, first of all as a guarantee that the United States will still keep an eye on this ‘field’," he added.
According to the Russian top diplomat, Moscow sees threats not in the very existence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but in the alliance’s practices.
"One of the main threats to Russia’s security is in NATO’s further eastward expansion and the alliance’s policy of using military force in violation of international law, the way it happened in Libya and Yugoslavia," Lavrov said.
"We see threats not in the existence of NATO but in the way that military alliance acts in practice," Lavrov said.
According to the minister, the North Atlantic Alliance has used the situation in Ukraine to invent a new reason for justifying its existence.
"Now serious analysts have no doubts that NATO has used the reason provided by the coup d’etat in Ukraine and our reaction towards attempts to discriminate Russians in Ukraine to invent a new meaning of the alliance’s existence," Lavrov said.
Lavrov said earlier the Soviet Union was the reason for NATO’s existence. "However, the alliance did not disband when the Soviet Union disappeared," the Russian foreign minister said.
"A new pretext was needed, a kind of a new mission as the United States was not planning at all to let Europeans float freely in the security issues," he said.
"Then Afghanistan came up as a new uniting threat," he reminded. "NATO’s mission was there for more than 10 years and fought against terrorism, but in my opinion, the fight ended in a reverse result," Lavrov said.
NATO suspended practical civilian and military cooperation with Russia in 2014 amid strained relations over the Ukrainian crisis, with the Alliance accusing Moscow of involvement in the conflict. Russia has repeatedly refuted all allegations.
Last month, US and polish officials broke ground for the US missile station in the Redzikowo military base near Poland’s Baltic coast. The site once belonged to the Nazis and later the Soviets.
The base will become operational by 2018 and complete the $800 million missile program for NATO members in Europe.
The Aegis Ashore-type missile facility in Redzikowo will be just 250km from Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. The facility will include 24 land-based SM-3 missiles and anti-aircraft systems.
Russia, however, regards the system as a threat to its national security. Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized on May 13 the deployment of the US missile system in Eastern Europe and warned that Moscow “will be forced to consider putting an end to the threats emerging in relation to Russia's security."
Russia, infuriated by NATO’s eastward expansion, has boosted its defense capabilities along its western borders.
